


Lying, Defining

by ice_hot_13



Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-18
Updated: 2013-04-18
Packaged: 2017-12-08 19:38:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/765234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ice_hot_13/pseuds/ice_hot_13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taylor is in love with Marc.  (original hockey players!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lying, Defining

  
          Marc says he loves his girlfriend. 

          He also says he doesn't whiten his teeth, that they're this white naturally, but Taylor knows when he's lying. 

          Taylor has known Marc since they were nineteen and rookie hockey players, and now, four years after going professional, nothing has changed. They're still on a team together and Marc still claims he doesn't whiten his teeth and he still claims he loves Kelsey and Taylor still knows he's lying. All that's changed is that it hurts Taylor more when Marc tries to lie to him.

         

0o0o0o0o0o

 

_“Of course I love her, she’s my girlfriend,” Marc says, rolling his eyes._

_“I was just asking.”_

_“We’ve been together a whole year,” Marc says, as if this means a lot even though it’s actually been less than a year, because he isn’t even twenty yet, and he’s on the road more often than at home, really. He sees Taylor more often than he sees Kelsey. “When’re you going to start dating someone?”_

_“Why bother?” Taylor says, and Marc laughs, but Taylor meant that he may as well already be dating Marc. They’re certainly together enough. Taylor’s in love with him. He doesn’t think there’s a relationship that could mean more than this._

 

_0o0o0o0o_

 

          "I knew it," Taylor grins when Marc spits out the plastic whitening strip, but Marc just laughs and pulls him back down to kiss him properly. 

 

0o0o0o0o

 

          Taylor has never met her. _Never._ Marc’s from eastern Canada and she lives out there, he didn’t meet Marc until he came out west to be on the same team Taylor came from the prairies to join. She was in school, so never had time to visit during the season, saw Marc during the summers when he went home. She stayed out there even after Marc and Taylor both went pro together, miraculously still on the same team, like the league knows as well as Taylor does that they were supposed to stay together.

 

0o0o0o0o

 

          "What's _wrong_ with you?" Marc snarls at him, and then he looks at Taylor, and Taylor can feel it when Marc realizes. Marc's gaze drops and he sighs out a curse, no anger at all, and pulls Taylor into his arms. "I didn't know," he whispers, and Taylor just holds onto him and says nothing, because he'd never intended for Marc to know, because Marc knowing ruins everything there never was. Marc doesn't say anything when Taylor starts to cry, as if he knows this is his fault, for letting Taylor meet the woman who claims to love Marc more than he does, even though no one ever could, no one. 

 

0o00o

 

          “I’m going to marry her, because I can’t marry you.”

 

0o0o0o

 

          Sometimes, Taylor wonders what he did that was so terrible that he would deserve this. 

 

0o0o0

 

          _They’re both pretty drunk. Marc’s always been a really touchy-feely drunk, and Taylor’s always gone out with him a lot just because of this, because Marc will throw an arm around his shoulders or around his waist, and Taylor long since gave up his sense of shame in surrender to this._

_And afterwards - afterwards, back in their hotel room, Marc tosses Taylor down on the bed and fucks him into the mattress and in the morning, they both pretend that Taylor wasn’t whimpering and clingy and altogether more invested in this than he should be._

_They do it all again and again until it becomes a routine, like they’re proving to themselves that they didn’t notice the warning signs that say Taylor and Marc are on completely different sides of this._  

 

0o0o0o

         

          “ _Why not?”_ Taylor asks. They don’t even need context anymore.

          Marc is never able to give him a real answer. Sometimes he talks about how great his relationship with Kelsey is, sometimes he talks about it being the logical next step, and sometimes he just looks at Taylor, like maybe he wants to apologise.

 

0o0o0o

 

          Taylor gets traded. He cries all night, but when he gets to his new city, he breathes in the mountain air and thinks _this doesn’t hurt._ He hasn’t felt painless in years; it’s not surprising, that he mistakes this numb, beyond-hurt breaking for a lack of pain. It’s been a long, long time.

 

o0o0o0o

 

          He marries someone else, three years later. It’s falling in love a second time, a little muted, a little faded, but he makes Taylor laugh, and he’s never heard the name _Marc,_ he has no idea he knows only a post-Marc Taylor, will never know differently.

Sometimes, Taylor wakes up at night and thinks it’s Marc beside him.

 

0o0oo

 

          _“I’m in love with you,” Taylor says. He swears - he swears he sees a moment of happiness in Marc’s eyes before Marc frowns and looks away. Maybe if Taylor never saw that -_

          _“Taylor,” is all Marc says, sad and subdued and he knew this, he must have known this, he sounds defeated and exhausted, but for a moment, Taylor saw something he recognised from his dreams. Maybe if he never saw it, if there was never a single moment when loving Marc didn’t hurt - but Taylor is defined by this moment. He’s defined by the promise and the devastation, by the one moment when he told Marc he loved him, and Marc looked like home. This is all Taylor will ever amount to, because the man he loves lies to him, and one moment made Taylor hope that everything that followed was a lie._

 


End file.
